The sunlight on the floor changed slightly; the angle of the sun had caught itself on something new. Jospehine, our dear dear neighbor, had opened her window and was falsely fluffing the flowers in her window box, taking the opportunity to catch a glimpse of our life across the courtyard. This particular window of hers faces ours directly. As a result she considers herself very lucky. This is apparent by the amount of time she devotes to tasks that require her to hover directly around this window…waiting for the moment that we are doing something of interest (and the threshold for something interesting for Josephine is actually very low; standing in the room suffices). For example, she found Xavier vacuuming the room absolutely thrilling. He is handsome, but in this case, she could only see his legs and the base of the vacuum since the curtains were half-way drawn, hardly enough motivation to watch enthralled. I could picture the way her face fell when Xavier closed the curtains fully so that she was blocked out from scrutinizing his housekeeping.
Our peaceful moment was interrupted by her shrill voice penetrating the morning air. She had been up for hours fussing. Knowing that our window was open and that we could unmistakably hear her, she leaned far out of her window to holler down to a neighbor two floors below her and across the courtyard, whose window was providentially also open. “Les velos!” Josephine bellowed. I thought perhaps the neighbor below might not be receptive to this kind of communication – blather across the courtyard through open windows, but au contraire. Josephine had found an audience. Xavier and I giggled with wide eyes as they discussed the calamity of our bikes still being parked in the courtyard. "What audacity! What a daily inconvenience to each tenant in the building! Insolence! The bikes must be brought to the cave!" (Said as if decreeing some kind of sentence for a couple of criminals).
The bike issue really makes me laugh. It is a huge courtyard. They are two lovely bikes with baskets and they are parked nicely and neatly by the trash cans. When Josephine first spoke of the “cave” that first day we moved in, I thought it was a funny term she used for a basement. I am American. I can’t get away from that sometimes. No, I should have taken here far more literally. The cave is exactly that. A huge hollowed out medieval space below the building made of stone blocks. When I was brought down there by the guy who did all the work on our apartment, he warned me on the way down not to be scared. The door to our allotted portion of the cave looks like the door to a medieval prison, with a lock like that and all. The spiders even looked like they were from the 12th century. I was scared. And to be honest, I want nothing to do with the cave. Carrying my bike down the winding stone, semi-dark staircase everyday seems like a really mean sentence decreed upon me. Like I’ve done something criminal by owning and riding a bike.
The situation became more complicated when my handbag was stolen in Rome (in which the precious keys to the cave were stored). Xavier and I were taking a little nap on a shaded bench in that hot city and I had placed my handbag just underneath us, thinking that I would sense anyone who tried to come that close. Not so. The Italians have a reputation that, unfortunately, they lived up to nicely for us those few days we spent in Rome. To be fair, I loved Rome and the Italians…the strange Vatican experience; the monks and nuns selling Jesus paraphernalia at the gift shops, the wretched beggars sprawled on the streets in supplication (I think assuming that their tragedy and piety in begging would be more lucrative and convincing to the gawking tourists), the endless rows of grey plastic chairs in the middle of the vast Vatican courtyard, all presumably awaiting a visitation from the Pope…the Italian men, letching at any woman under the age of 65 (“maybe just one kiss is possible?” over and over)…the scalding sun already in early June…the rich sense of place that permeates all of Europe in the architecture, the vestiges of civilization preserved, especially for Americans…and the cab drivers, oh the drivers. One night Xavier and I were returning to our hotel in a cab and our driver was absolutely wild. 19 years old, soccer jersey, big smile, not a word of English, loud loud music (which, ironically was in English, a hip hop song called “Wild Boys”…absolutely fitting and he didn’t even know it) and the most insane driver I have literally ever experienced. I thought drivers in New York cabs were a bit reckless. However, there is a world between an imprudent New York cabbie and this fellow. Red lights meant absolutely nothing to him. People in the street didn’t really mean anything either. Neither of these were indications to slow down or to stop. He didn’t even really consider that a road (even an Italian one) is fashioned for traffic that runs in two directions. Both lanes were his, the sidewalk, the cop he almost ran over and then had a brief exchange of pleasantries screamed over his music and the noise of acceleration, his.
Back to Josephine. It has now been a full week that the bikes have been in the courtyard and Josephine’s nerves are entirely shot. I was laughing about it until I heard a persistent and severe knock on the door this morning. She had spoken to Xavier on his way in from work last night. (You see, she peers through the peephole in her door every time she hears noises in the hallway. The sound of a key in the keyhole of our door is utter excitement for her. It means we are home for surveillance). She jumped out of her apartment, hearing his noises in the hallway, and demanded straight out that something be done about this galling situation. Xavier feigned a call from his father and quickly removed himself from the situation promising to make a copy of her key to the cave as soon as possible and get the bikes down there. Coward. It was me who had to face her music this morning. Standing in front of me, she was wringing her hands, literally. I watched her as she pressed them against each other over and over again, her face twisted in suffering.
By the time I shut the door, it was me who was fretting. I called Xavier at work and told him that he must do a better job of explaining the situation to her, or reaching some understanding. Wise Xavier. He responded, “Emilie, don’t you see that this woman is delighted? She has something to agonize about, to fret at night, even to lose sleep over. She is in heaven. She can’t believe her luck, that she got such neighbors.”
In so many ways Xavier is not French in any sense. He is, by nature, in a hurry, impatient. Efficiency is chief. Our biggest fights in moving have been over my inability to be passably efficient in moving boxes to and fro or in getting up and down staircases quickly enough. This is not French. His co-workers drive him mad. He turned to me last night and said, “It is impossible to work between 12:30 and 2:00pm at my office. There is always someone missing, gone for lunch. First, it is lunch all together and then coffee, of course. A procession. I am considered antisocial because I skip out on coffee. I am already tortured by the whole process.” And meetings, he cannot deal with. He plans to tell his boss outright that the meetings stretching over the entire morning are unacceptable. But French people seem to love them. In many ways, Xavier is very American. It is a good thing he is in business.
Xavier the businessman
My favorite bike path along the Seine
This was taken with my mobile phone while buzzing around Paris on my bike
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